Dear Hip-Hop

Dear Hip-Hop,
I am writing to you as a concerned citizen. I recognize your global impact and your ability to paint a new picture of blackness. With this being said, I feel that you have lost your revolutionary voice and have begun to highlight historically racist views of black people. I am simply asking why? Why when you have the ability to transform and challenge the historical depictions of the disenfranchised do you glamorize them for profit? Is material privilege really worth damaging countless lives, lives that search for meaning through Hip-Hop? I know that some will say there are larger culprits that have no concern for the disenfranchised and seek to package black buffoonery to ensure their privileged lifestyles. However, I must say that it is the faces that we see on the television that have the most impact. It is your fictional tales of the drug life that inspire countless young males to re-interpret the American Dream through the embrace of illegal economies. It is your words that set the foundation for how young men and women view themselves. I am simply asking when consciousness will re-enter the conversation? When will profit not dictate that artist abandon responsibility and sacrifice their soul on the alter of Stardom? Hip-Hop has the power to be the soundtrack for revolution or it can continue to be the lyrical barrier to communal consciousness. The choice is yours, millions of people wait to hear you decision.